Public health social media communications and consumer neuroscience

Figures & data

Table 1. Neural correlates of fMRI study on decision-making and charitable donations

Theme	Reference	Neural correlates and theoretical frameworks	Research findings
Decision-making	Rilling and Sanfey (2011)	Amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), vmPFC	Decision-making, fear of betrayal, inequity aversion, social pain, envy, trust
	Hare, Camerer, Knoepfle, O’Doherty, and Rangel (2010)	Ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)	Charitable donations and decision-making
	Moll et al. (2006), Andreoni (1990)	Mesolimbic reward system including dorsal and ventral striatum, and ventral tegmental area	Decision to make charitable donations. These neural areas also activated when individuals received monetary rewards (Moll et al., 2006) reinforcing the concept of “warm glow” associated with giving (Andreoni, 1990)
	Moll et al. (2006)	Medial orbitofrontal and subgenual areas in addition to lateral orbitofrontal regions	Activated for decisions to give or oppose donations to certain charities involved in societal causes
		Anterior prefrontal cortex and Ventral striatum and Septal nuclei brain structures	Activated with decisions during donations favouring altruism over self-interested material gains. Further investigation revealed difference between which brain regions activated during receipt of purely financial reward compared to costly or non-costly charitable donation i.e. during experiment participants received monetary reward for making donation or made donation in addition to an additional cost to their funds
		Mesolimbic reward system	Activated for financial reward combined with non-costly donation
		Subgenual area, in particular posterior medial orbitofrontal cortex, ventral cingulate cortex (BA 25) and septal areas	Activated for costly and non-costly decisions
		Lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) (BA 11/47), dorsolateral cortex and anterior insula	Activated for opposition to costly and non-costly donations
Altruism	Tankersley, Stowe, and Huettel (2007)	Posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), especially RH	Activation of pSTC predicts behaviours associated with altruism and assistance (but not empathy)
Prediction	Chua et al. (2011)	dmPFC	Prediction of quitting amongst smokers based on neural correlates using smoking cessation health communications
	Janes et al. (2010)	Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)	Likelihood of smoking relapse
Prevention	Calvert et al. (2010)	Nucleus accumbens, dopamine neuro transmitters, right prefrontal cortex (right hemisphere), orbito and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex	Review of use of neuroscience to inform smoking prevention approaches, disgust, satisfied/deprived smokers, rituals
	Oullier, Cialdini, Thaler, and Mullainathan (2010)	Behavioural economics	Public health PSA improvements, prevention, organ donations, wastage, road safety, smoking, nutrition, hygiene
Value	Bartra, McGuire, and Kable (2013)	Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), striatum, anterior insula, thalamus	Subjective value, decision-making, positive/negative valence
	Levy and Glimcher (2012)	Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)/orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)	Choice and rewards
	Kable and Glimcher (2009)	vmPFC, striatum, lateral prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex	Review of valuation and choice circuit studies in decision-making
Addiction	Koob et al. (1998)	Dopaminergic system, nigrostriatal system, substantia nigra, corpus striatum; mesocorticolimbic dopamine system, ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens, amygdala, frontal cortex	Addiction, nicotine, cocaine, marijuana, reward/non-reward pathways, withdrawal relapse, neuroadaptation
	Wong et al. (2015)	Psychological reactance theory	Anti-smoking PSAs and smokers’ responses, addiction, second-hand smoke, cessation

Table 2. Examples of successful health communications and social media marketing campaigns

Marketing campaign	Year	Overview	Results	Celebrity involvement emotion +ve/−ve spin offs
ManUp	2016	Encouraged men to speak up about their emotions in attempt to increase awareness and help prevent suicide in young men aged between 15 and 44	• 22,414 Facebook likes • 22,386 followers (@ 14 December 2016)	• Public figure Guy Worland, an Australian radio announcer with Triple M • +ve emotion • Made into a 3-part documentary series with and the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), funded by Movember and the University of Melbourne • Documentary reached 333,000 viewers • Consumer generated offshoots such as ManUp SpeakUp www.manup.org.au • twitter 526 followers, 2281 likes, 550 tweets @16 December 2016
World health day	2014	Twitter used to conduct global public health campaign for World Health Day 2014	• 93 million accounts reached globally (Dumbrell & Steele, 2015) • Tweeters focused on dissemination of information rather than making casual or humourous tweets (Dumbrell & Steele, 2015)	• Due to large following of celebrity or public figure tweets achieved reach of 93 million global accounts requiring only minimal tweets from campaign organisers (Dumbrell & Steele, 2015)
UNICEF tap project	2014	• Droga5 and UNICEF • Challenged individuals to refrain from using their phones for as long as possible • In exchange UNICEF sponsors made donation for every 10 min a registered individual did not use their cell phone in order to provide a day’s clean water for a needy child (Droga5, 2014)	• Campaign asked individuals to “reflect on what it means to be without water by giving up access to something far less vital: cell phones” (Droga5, 2014) • Campaign appealed to individual’s sense of humanity, care, kindness and compassion	• Celebrities used for earlier Tap Project campaigns
Ice-bucket challenge	2014	Motor Neuron Disease (MND)	• Raised an estimated $220 million USD globally • Over $3 million AUD in Australia (Motor Neuron Disease, 2016) • Total income increased significantly for 2014/15 at $1,769,505 compared to $194,941 previous year (Motor Neuron Disease, 2016) • Facebook fans increase from 2,700 to 7,000 (Motor Neuron Disease, 2016) • MND Australia enewsletter subscribers increased by 5,000 (Motor Neuron Disease, 2016)
World humanitarian day	2012	• 19 August 2012 by Droga 5, United Nations and Beyoncé • Aimed to increase awareness of worldwide humanitarian needs • Asked people to do something good for another person to celebrate World Humanitarian Day • Increased awareness of 19 August as World Humanitarian Day (Droga5, 2012b)	• Campaign appealed to individual’s sense of hope, compassion, humanity, kindness. • Social reach of 1,029,763,492 (Droga5, 2012b) • Enabled individuals to pledge support, do something good for someone else, and spread a global message of hope on social media (Droga5, 2012b)	• Beyoncé
Help, I want to save a life	2012	• Aimed to reduce entry barrier and increase number of bone marrow registrations (Droga5, 2012a) • Health Communication appealed to individual’s humanity, kindness, care and goodwill • TED Conference launched the campaign in 2012 (D&AD, 2012)	• Achieved unexpected campaign success and results • Tripled bone marrow registrations (D&AD, 2012) • Increased bandage sales by 1900% (D&AD, 2012) • Increased global brand awareness (D&AD, 2012) • Campaign won two Gold Lion awards (D&AD, 2012) • Campaign won Cannes Grand Prix for Good award (D&AD, 2012)	• Stanford Graduate School of Business incorporated campaign into its curriculum (D&AD, 2012)

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